The Wellness Edition No.70 // Pushy People
About 2 years ago I already wrote a blog post about dealing with dominant personalities and the article today goes into a similar direction since i had my fair share of dealing with pushy people for way too long. All I can say is that it drives me nuts to deal with those folks. Especially since I quickly fall into the bad habit of people pleasing, so you can imagine that this is a pretty lethal combination once a pushy person and someone with the tendency of people pleasing cross paths.
So what exactly are pushy people? I’d say they only see themselves and their interests and the gains they get out of you. They are self-centered and want to take advantage of your skills, contacts, professional experiences and/or time. They don’t care about you as a person, they only care about what they can get out of you. Let it be having you work for them for free, giving out information to them, setting up contacts and connections for them, them sneaking into your workplace and your circle of friends, in the dating world trying to push you into having sex with you quickly is another case of pushy people behaviour, them taking advantage of you financially and so on. I think you now get a feeling what I am talking about. As you can see the list is pretty long and their behaviour is extremely disrespectful, selfish and sneaky.
Believe me, everything I mentioned above I experienced in one or another way. I had ‘friends’ sneaking into my workplaces, into my group of friends, me having babysitted their pet over months to get very little in return, having worked for ‘friends’ for free without ever getting anything of what we had agreed on before, me giving out free consultations/coachings/design work for their projects (things I never initiated but I was too stupid or too prone to people-pleasing to decline and to say no in a friendly manner), clients who made me work weekends in a row, people not showing up for meetings even though I blocked my precious time just for them, another ‘friend’ even sneaked her way into my at that time boyfriend’s family. You can see, it has been very ugly the list of things that happened.
As long as you are a benefit for those pushy people and as long as they can take advantage of you, they will sneak around you and take all the benefits they get from you and as soon as you set healthy boundaries because you are sick of dealing with their shady and demanding attitude and their narcissistic behaviour, you will never hear from them again nor see them again. And the sooner you realise, that someone is an energy vampire who tries to exploit you and your knowledge, your kindness, your willingness to help them, your willingness to connect them with your professional contacts and friends, you giving them your time and so on, once you get the hang of what is going on and stop engaging with their demanding behaviour, then very quickly they will disappear from your life as quickly as they got into your life. Good for you because you are better than that and your time and energy are too precious for having to deal with shady, dominant and pushy folks.
Anyways, I am sick of dealing with pushy folks who only see themselves as the center of this planet and I try avoiding being around them as much as I can in order to protect my sanity and my energy and of course also my time. I think the fastest way of stopping to engage with them is to set healthy boundaries. Because boundaries are something these kind of people can’t stand but as soon as you set boundaries you stop people-pleasing and then they can’t get anymore from you what they want from you. End of the story. It’s a happy end for you then at least!
